Fun activities

Interesting things at the symp: not on the schedule

Spirit handouts

Each morning we had a little yellow paper waiting for us outside our hotel room door. This was a special ‘spirit handout'. This was to bring out our Melton spirit every morning. It had a tit-bits of information from fact-files and an interesting activity associated with it. This activity was a task that had to be performed during breakfast at the hotel. Some were as simple as coming barefoot(bare-footing) to breakfast or wearing blue( ‘making blue..’). A few others were rather bizarre like for instance women wearing neckties, guys sporting jewellery (breaking fashion norms) and girls wearing braids and so on. On the last day, we even had a game of testing how much we knew each other. All in all, there was something to read early in the morning and there was always something fun to discuss at the breakfast table apart from sleep deprivation:)

Karaoke nights

This really brought out the best and worst in people. We spent endless hours crooning numbers from the 80 and 90. Singing and dancing, playing the awesome karaoke competition was a great way to unwind after a day of hectic schedules and meetings. Music always brings all of us together and this was when singing well did not matter, it was the bonding that was important. It was the Melton spirit that refuses to go to sleep past dinner kept all of us up and about until the wee hours of daybreak. There were singles, duets and once even a German group rendition of a song. There was always a song for everyone and I am guessing we sang each and every song on the play list.

SF Bowling night

The SF got do a lot of fun activities during the symp. The bowling night was certainly memorable. We split up into two groups for dinner to have Chinese or Turkish food, to meet up later at a quaint bowling place. This was quite different from the bowling we have back home which is more American. Of course- because this was German bowling! The alley was smaller and the pins were suspended by strings. The bowling ball was way smaller and had no holding grooves to clasp. The place had already boosted our enthusiasm by its look and th germans just made it more fun for us with their interesting bowing games. There was the 3 digit game, quite interesting. Then the pyramid game- even more competitive and very exciting. The cheers, the talent, the fun came all put together made for a lovely night out in Jena.